Nepotism and Incompetence - Sigil's Legacy

Visceral Monkey writes "In the wake of SOE's purchase of Sigil and Vanguard , there are a number of questions to be answered. The commentary site F13, purveyors of usefully cynical opinions, have a pair of fascinating interviews on the subject. The first is an anonymous discussion with a former team member, laying out the working conditions at Sigil prior to the end. The second is a talk with Brad McQuaid, one of the men behind EverQuest and the captain of the debacle that is Vanguard. Both interviews highlight the nepotism, incompetence, corruption, and evasion that were the last day of Sigil Online Games."

Comments

Brad was not responsible for EQ1's success.

[Anonymous Coward]

Brad wasn't the genius behind EverQuest. EverQuest was just a situation. The right game at the right time with the right design. Vanguard now has become the biggest flop vs hype in MMO history. This guy so poorly managed his company, it's amazing he ever had one to begin with... Anybody following Brad McQuaid might as well drink the poison-laced kool-aid now as he has nothing to offer but broken promises and nothing tangible.

Re:Brad was not responsible for EQ1's success.

[vux984]

Brad wasn't the genius behind EverQuest.

No, but to his credit, he deserves credit for being able to say no to the player base.

WoW is the natural evolution of Everquest. It does practically everything the players wanted from everquest.

The irony is that WoW by giving players everything they want, has no point. Its easy. Its dumb. It has no soul. Everquest, by refusing to give in to the players forced the players to adapt and cope. When you accomplished something in Everquest (pre Luclin), it felt like an accomplishment. Getting to the end of WoW outside of the 'hardcore raid game' can be done by a trained monkey.

That's not to say Everquest didn't have its short comings -- it had a boatload, literally ;) But the reason Vanguard was so anticipated was that people thought Brad would be able to pull off a new game with the spirit of everquest -- a game that was genuinely hard, but still fun.

A game that felt like a *world*, rather than just a chatroom-zone that linked to to instanced missions (a theme which D&D online took to the extreme)

A game that didn't hold your hand to the point that you almost can't get lost, or fail, or lose anything ever, unless you actually try. EQ was famous for brutally punishing players for mistakes, and often even just arbitrarily (spawning a cyclops 2 feet from you that can kill you in 1 second), but as annoying as that was, it was actually preferable to the risk free 'you can run away from anything mechanics' that dominate later games.

A game where death was something that actually hurt, as opposed to the 15 second inconvenience it is in most games now. In early EQ dying sucked. If you survived a difficult fight, or an unwanted add, or whatever, it was truly elating. If someone saved your ass you were grateful, they'd just saved you 20 minutes of travel and 2 hours worth of monster killing not to mention a possibly difficult corpse recovery... in modern games, dying is irrelevant, so avoiding it is meaningless. Early EQ was sometimes harder than it really should have been, but it was more satisfying than any title today, at least to a LOT of fans.

Re:Brad was not responsible for EQ1's success.

[Chris Burke]

A game that didn't hold your hand to the point that you almost can't get lost, or fail, or lose anything ever, unless you actually try. EQ was famous for brutally punishing players for mistakes, and often even just arbitrarily (spawning a cyclops 2 feet from you that can kill you in 1 second), but as annoying as that was, it was actually preferable to the risk free 'you can run away from anything mechanics' that dominate later games.

A game where death was something that actually hurt, as opposed to the 15 second inconvenience it is in most games now. In early EQ dying sucked. If you survived a difficult fight, or an unwanted add, or whatever, it was truly elating. If someone saved your ass you were grateful, they'd just saved you 20 minutes of travel and 2 hours worth of monster killing not to mention a possibly difficult corpse recovery...

So let me get this straight. The game is difficult, you can't run away from a fight that is too much for you, a single random spawn while you're fighting other mobs could result in you being overwhelmed, and if you die from such a cheap occurance you not only have to waste half an hour getting to your corpse, you then have to repeat 2 hours of mindless grinding just to regain your lost progress? Two and a half hours of boredom is my punishment for daring to try to kill one more mob at once than I should, or being around when a mob spawns?

FUCK THAT.

I'm sorry, forget whether or not death has "meaning". My time has meaning. We're talking about a genre that is already defined by taking the least amount of content and turning it into the maximum amount of time spent by the player by requiring lengthy "grinds". At least when I grind in WoW I'm making forward progress. Two hours is a full night's session -- if I logged on one night, ground away for two hours, then the next night had to repeat the exact same process because I'd gotten unlucky and died, I'd cancel my subscription. It's already sketchy enough deliberately wasting my time so as to acrue more monthly fees, but to actually set me backwards as "punishment" for the game being cheap would be the final straw.

I can't imagine how groups would form in EQ, unless you already knew everyone involved. At least, I'd never join a PuG, because I'm never going to want to risk losing 2 hours of actual progress because of someone else's screwup. In a WoW PuG I'm only risking the actual time I spend with the PuG (plus some gold), they can't actually undo the progress I've made before.

If I want an RPG where death has meaning, I'll play nethack. At least in nethack the game knows how to be both hard and give you plenty of ways to escape or otherwise survive deadly situations.

Re:Brad was not responsible for EQ1's success.

[vux984]

I can't imagine how groups would form in EQ, unless you already knew everyone involved.

The risk of someone else screwing up and getting you all killed was far less than the risk of getting yourself killed if you tried to do anything interesting by yourself.

At least, I'd never join a PuG, because I'm never going to want to risk losing 2 hours of actual progress because of someone else's screwup.

I hear ya man, I mean, I know you only logged in to watch that little xp bar move forwards. The actual socializing, and working as a team, and so on are all secondary concerns.

In a WoW PuG I'm only risking the actual time I spend with the PuG (plus some gold), they can't actually undo the progress I've made before.

Not only that. If you spend any time with a group (pug or otherwise) that doesn't directly result in "progress" that time must have been "wasted".

My time has meaning.

Yes, I can see that. I certainly understand how you wouldn't want "playing the game" to get in the way of "progression".

We're talking about a genre that is already defined by taking the least amount of content and turning it into the maximum amount of time spent by the player by requiring lengthy "grinds".

Who defined it like that? Everquest wasn't meant to be a game you 'finished'. It was meant to be a game you explored. There was plenty to do at 20th level, and even more to do at 30th. The game at 50th wasn't going to disappear, so what's the rush?

At least when I grind in WoW I'm making forward progress. Two hours is a full night's session -- if I logged on one night, ground away for two hours, then the next night had to repeat the exact same process because I'd gotten unlucky and died, I'd cancel my subscription.

I would too, if I were you. But then I won't "grind" so after two days I don't look at my "progress bar" see that it hasn't moved, and cry about all the time I've wasted. Instead, I have 4 hours worth of enjoyment to look back on. Why cancel my subscription? I'm having a blast. Its the people fixating on the xp bar, grinding away in one spot, night after night, that get frustrated and burnt out.

It's already sketchy enough deliberately wasting my time so as to acrue more monthly fees, but to actually set me backwards as "punishment" for the game being cheap would be the final straw.

You are the one who decided that not seeing the progress bar move amounted to 'wasting your time'. The key to having fun in a mmorpg is ignore progression and just have fun. You are going to progress anyway - some days fantasticly - other days none... but there's no reason to fixate on it.

As for EQ being 'cheap' in terms of arbitrary and completely unjust deaths: That there would be a wandering cyclops that could squash you if you weren't paying attention and let it get too close WAS part of the vision, but getting squashed on a zone-line or re-spawn were unfortunate artifacts of the game engine and never really part of the 'vision'.

When vangaurd was announced the premise was that he'd recognized that that that the game mechanics and game vision have been at cross-purposes -- the most efficient way to "progress" was the least fun ("grinding") while the most fun path through the game (exploring new areas, challenging new creatures, taking risks, etc) resulted in the worst progression. So one of Vangaurds mottos was that the most efficient path also be the most fun. So even people fixated on progress would end up having fun in spite of themselves ;)

It was (and still is) a good idea.

WoW's "solution" of just removing all the risks and obstacles to progression has led to a soulless experience.

As for WoW's endgame... that's a different story. And I'll concede that WoW endgame is pretty good... if you happen to be in the minority of players who play frequently and regularly enough to fit into an organized raiding guilds schedule. Unfortunately, most players never see that

Re:Brad was not responsible for EQ1's success.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever run into a Fel Reaver?

You miss the point. Losing to anything in the game - including a "fel reaver" - has no consequences. The worst thing that happens? You have to waste some time running back to a corpse (a brief flash in the pan compared to the time sink that is travelling around mindlessly when you're alive) and/or you have to pay a pittance to repair some equipment.

Warcraft's strong point is that anyone from an idiot to a genius can pick it up and play it, and it's failing point is the same. It's easy to get into, but it never gets challenging. There's no motivation to do well or learn tactics because winning and losing feel the same, and if you blunder around long enough you're practically guaranteed to get where you need to go after awhile.

The only motivation in Warcraft is to do something, but the mechanics don't give you much leeway in what you do, so you just grind around. Warcraft is an exercise in futility from start 'til self-inflicted end and that's all it was ever intended to be.

Without any threat of loss, and no ultimate goal to achieve, it's an absurdist time and money sink, not a game.

Deja Vu

[Organic Brain Damage]

Sigil = Ion Storm
Vanguard = Daikatana
McQuaid = Romero
EQ1 = DOOM

Details here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana

Same as it ever was.

Most MMOs will be flops

[ceswiedler]

The MMO industry is shaping up to be much like the movie industry. There's a ton of money to be made, and everyone knows it, and everyone wants a piece. But making a blockbuster, or even breaking-even, is HARD. Really hard. And expensive. And so the only way to be profitable is to make a lot of them, some good and some bad, and hope you come out ahead.

Worse, at least the movie business is rather mature. There are lots of people who know what they're doing, more or less. The MMO business is in its infancy. It's as if movies had been invented in 1970, then Jaws comes out in 1976, and you have a dozen production companies striving to reproduce that one huge success.

In this day and age, just getting an MMO out the door is basically a success.

Re:Sometimes things go wrong

[dc29A]

It's pretty easy to criticize when things go wrong. But in order for something like an MMO to be completed and succeed, a tremendous number of things need to go right.

I find Sigil very easy to criticize. ONE QA!? What the hell? Let me repeat that, one single QA. One person to test the entire game. For projects far less complex we use 10 times the number of QA people Sigil used. It's beyond mind boggling that a project of Vanguard's complexity has one single person doing QA. If that is not worth criticising, I don't know what is. I won't even mention the fake demos Sigil showed Microsoft. The internal bickerings and whatnot.

Sigil screwed up from the start. Very bad management. They could probably write a book about how not to lead a company.

One QA!? Jebus ...

Re:Sometimes things go wrong

[Kohath]

The fact that they had one QA person didn't make the game a failure. The things that made the game a failure led to them only having one QA person.

Brad explained this in his interview. Focusing on only having 1 QA person misses the big picture.

You're right about the bad management though.

Re:How to conduct an interview 101

[Kohath]

Real journalists tend to conduct the most worthless, uninformative interviews. Have you ever read an interview about a game before? The journalist hasn't played the game. The questions are extremely generic because the journalist doesn't have a clue.

Journalists are some of the least-informed, least-interesting, least-curious people. If they don't care about the subject of the interview, you get PR drivel. If they do care, they are biased and not objective and after the interview is edited, you basically get the journalist's spin rather than information.

These interviews were good because the interviewer cared about the answers and the subject.

Why does this surprise so many?

[garylian]

Just about everyone and their brother was trying to come up with the next WoW, after seeing the money that Blizzard was raking in. Heck, it started before that, with the success of EQ1.

A MMO that has more than 100,000 subscribers is basically printing money. Keep the customers happy, and you have a great revenue stream that keeps on coming. Sure, you can release some non-MMO and make xx% on those 100,000 copies, and have to patch it. Or, you can release a MMO, make that same money, and keep on making money from your monthly fee while you do those patches. Gee, I wonder what many companies tried to do?

Yep, make MMOs. LOTS of them. Look at some of the crap NCSoft is putting out. Some of them are old Korean games that are simply getting a re-skin. I liked CoH/V for simple fun, but most of their titles have been crap.

The problem lies in the fact that most of these MMOs were bad ideas that only got worse as the corruption and nepotism set in. Everyone wants to get in on that "sure thing" revenue stream that a successful MMO has. So, there was some nepotistic investor "bloat".

Brad simply had a major leg up on the competition. Simply having his name associated with Sigil and V:SoH meant that people were going to pay a LOT more attention to this game than any other new game publisher was going to get. And that extra attention, coupled with the Brad "fanboi" syndrome, meant a guarantee of a certain intial sales figure. Hello, Investors!

So, this shouldn't really surprise people THAT much. Sure, you wish Brad and Sigil had better motives and intentions, but making and running a MMO is pure business. Brad figured that out, and became just like any other business man. He did his best to ensure his own profits, and screw the guys who really got him there: the developers.

The sad part here is folks are getting bent out of shape over this, and it happens all the time in other businesses. Someone buys out company, brings in various "pet investor friends", milks the company a little, then sells it off. The employees that made the company get shit on, and the investors make a fortune.

Welcome to the real world, MMOs!